Share

Apple supplier LG Display puts $1.8B into flexible displays

IHS expects that AMOLED displays with a low-temperature polysilicon (LTPS) backplane will account for 36 per cent of all smartphone displays shipped in 2020, surpassing a-Si TFT LCD and LTPS TFT LCD displays.

Advertisement

The world’s top liquid crystal display maker said April-June profit fell 91 percent from a year earlier to 44 billion won ($38.79 million), compared with a 43 billion won profit tipped by a Thomson Reuters StarMine SmartEstimate derived from a survey of 11 analysts. It’s been actively working on creating additional OLED screens for TVs and mobile phones, though it’s fallen behind Samsung Display Co Ltd., which happens to be the largest creator of OLEDs for phones.

LG Display Co., a supplier of Apple’s iPhone screens, said Wednesday that it will invest 1.99 trillion won ($1.75 billion) to produce flexible displays for smartphones, in a sign that more high-end smartphone makers may adopt flexible screens in the near future. Samsung uses flexible OLED screens for its Galaxy Edge series smartphones that feature displays that wrap around corners of the devices.

The company will add the new facilities with the monthly production capacity of 15,000 sheets of the sixth-generation plastic OLED – measured 1,500 millimeters by 1,859 millimeters – at the firm’s P9 plant in Paju, Gyeonggi Province.

The announcement comes in a short blog post from Samsung’s OEM partner, Crystal Display Systems (CDS), that says it received an end-of-life notice for the transparent displays from the Korean electronics giant, meaning it would no longer offer the product to its customers.

Advertisement

LG Display said second-quarter panel shipments by surface area rose 5.1 percent from the previous quarter while average selling prices fell 4 percent.

A man walks out of the headquarters of LG Display in Seoul